


Thorns

by OriginalCeenote



Category: Rapunzel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Childbirth, Emphasis on Implied, Exchange of a child to pay a debt, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Parental Death, Parody, Pregnancy, a REALLY OVERPROTECTIVE adoptive mother, don't mess with Mother Gothel, the Wicked Witch as an adoptive mother
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 09:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8322283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OriginalCeenote/pseuds/OriginalCeenote
Summary: We pay for our longings. Dearly.
A retelling of Rapunzel.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reposting from adultfanfiction, and originally it was going to be my Nanowrimo draft, two out of a four-part series of short stories. I never wrote the third and fourth.
> 
> This is just the first chapter. If I ever get out from under all of my other unfinished stories, this will get a second part to finish it.
> 
> This is DARK. I don't plan to write a sex scene for this story, but given that sex is implied in the original, it will be implied here. Tags will be added as this story grows, or as I think to add any.

I’m a simple man. I’ve never asked for much. I’ve learned not to want what I haven’t got. I never asked for the woman that I would marry to be anything but loving, honest and thrifty. Don’t think for a minute that she doesn’t embody those virtues. Charity’s been a good wife, even though I’ve provided her with a threadbare, pauper’s life.

We’ve live on this land nearly three years. We bought it for a steal, practically, and we wondered why the previous owner wanted to get rid of it. The soil is arable and rich, and there’s a crystal-clear river that runs nearly a mile from here, teeming every spring with salmon.

But the man I bought it from was delirious with joy when he signed over the deed. He was a pitiful looking soul, pasty and wizened, and his eyes looked like someone smudged them with coal, the mark of a man who hadn’t slept for weeks. “I’ve done it! I’ve DONE IT! Glory be to heaven! I’m SAVED!” he crowed. He must have noticed that I was staring at him oddly, because he calmed down for a moment, took the two meager sacks of coins I gave him, and bowed to me…yes, I said bowed. He was that grateful. Then he backed his way out the door. I followed him outside, but he was up in his wagon and snapping the reins like his life depended on it. I left the county office in a daze. Charity and I had a new home! The world was suddenly a bigger, brighter place, with so much promise!

Our home is a trifle remote; we haven’t many close neighbors. But the closest one owns about two acres of well-tilled land, flanked by a thriving apple orchard. I’m often jealous of those apples, but they don’t belong to me. I’m content with my humble, snug little house, my two-horse wagon, and having just enough coins to line my pocket to keep a fine loaf of bread on the table for supper every night.

I didn’t count on Charity having yearnings. Cravings, you could call them.

And I also didn’t count on my home having a curse.

Did I mention I lived next door to a witch?

I discovered her one day when I was drawing water from the well. She was an odd little thing. I thought for a moment that someone disguised a homely little warty troll in women’s skirts. But she looked up, feeling my eyes on her, and she made an odd hissing sound through her teeth. “SSSSSSSSSssssssst!” I jumped back and nearly spilled the water, I was so surprised. Goodness, what a wretched little creature she was, and I wasn’t even standing that close. “STAY AWAY! KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY GARDEN!” She pointed one long, bony finger at me, and I felt as though she was trying to stab me in the heart with it. I shivered, gathered my bucket and ran back into my house, unnerved by what I saw.

“What’s the matter? Be careful, or you’ll spill it,” Charity chided me.

“Horrid,” I muttered to myself. “Warty. Horrid.”

“Did a frog hop out at you?” she teased.

“Don’t…don’t touch her garden.”

“Oh, all right, then. You met Matilda next door.” Charity chuckled at me. “Eccentric little thing, isn’t she? I tried to take her a loaf of bread yesterday.”

“Tried?”

“She set her awful little cat at my heels. I never knew you could teach a cat to attack someone. I left the bread on the front stoop. Practically twisted my ankle running down the road, Silas.”

Occasionally we watch her from our window. We see her working in her garden, wearing dowdy black dresses with a ratty apron and holey gloves. She favors a hat with a dark veil to protect her waxy face from the sun, and occasionally I hear her singing a strange, obscene little ditty about goblins and ghosts coming out at night to haunt the living. Her voice is scratchy and guttural, making you feel like spiders were crawling over your skin.

But she works like a slave beneath the lash every day, creating the finest garden I’ve ever seen. We manage well enough with what we have, certainly. I’ve a meager few cows and some chickens, so we have fresh eggs and milk, and I chop wood and offer my services as a carpenter, but it is still a humble life. I make no apologies for it.

Our other pursuit that offers us free entertainment is watching Matilda build her tower. Again, this is remarkable, because she is such a tiny woman, but she has the strength of an ox. She hoists large planks on her shoulder and hauls a wheelbarrow of gravel and mortar back and forth, over and over. I watch that tower grow a brick at a time, higher, and higher still, and I wonder to myself…why? Why out here, in the middle of nowhere?

Even more oddly, why are there no windows? Well, just the one, I suppose, but clear up at the top. She can’t mean to live inside it, surely. But we continue to watch her, toiling every day. Every night, when she’s finished, she turns and finds us watching her.

She hisses at us, utters curses, and then spits on the ground. Dreadful. The little wretch is perfectly dreadful. But that tower is pristine, every row of stone perfectly even.

Strange. I just saw her close the door, and…she’s boarding it up. And she’s sealing it up with mortar, thick piles of it. It makes no sense. Baffling. Why on earth build a tower than you can’t even enter, live in, or barely see out of? Charity and I chuckled about that over our teacups before bed. When we finish them, I help her brush out her hair, one of the few luxuries I have. It’s truly beautiful, golden as new wheat, and it shines in the firelight. Charity keeps it long, and it flows past her lovely hips in soft ripples. I love the little sigh she makes when I run my hands through it and begin to work the brush through it. It often leads to other things that a polite gentleman doesn’t discuss, but I don’t have to paint you a picture.

But this night was different. If I’d known it was the last easy night I’d have as a married man, the last time I’d lay my head down and enjoy a well-deserved, unhaunted sleep, I would have savored it more and made it last. “Silas?” she asks me. She sounds pensive, and there’s an odd little note of sadness in her tone.

“Yes, sweet?”

“She does have a lovely garden.”

“She certainly wasn’t blessed with much else, wife.”

“Silas. Don’t be unkind.”

“Forgive my wicked tongue, love.”

“Silas? What’s that one plant? It looks like a green of some sort.”

“Which one? I saw a few different kinds. Mustard, I think. She had some nice cabbages, and some kale, I think.”

“It’s the one with the red veins,” she explained to me, and her eyes light up strangely when she describes it. “Nice, plump looking leaves. A dark, rich green.”

“Oh. That’s rampion, I believe.”

“It’s lovely. I’ll bet it’s tasty.”

“I doubt she’d give us any to plant.” I doubt she’d even hold her cat back from scratching my eyes out if I approached her door to ask, I want to add, but Charity’s pensive, and she sighs again.

“Well. It’s just a thought.”

But she stares out of that blasted window while I extinguish the candles, and I know she’s peeking into that garden.

If I’d known what trouble was brewing, I’d have drawn the curtains shut and boarded up my windows. This is how our curse began.

Over the course of a fortnight, Charity began to complain of a sour tummy. My wife is a strong woman, hale and hearty as an ox, so this worried me a bit.

“Perhaps some warm milk?” I suggest helpfully. “It’s fresh. Still warm and sweet.” I pour her a glass from the pitcher, proud of myself for being a kind, helpful husband. She eyes the milk, seeing the cream rising to the top, making the surface swirl and glisten. Promptly, she turns an indescribable shade of green, whips around and runs faster than my dog the time the cow kicked him for getting too familiar. “Ooo,” I wince. That doesn’t sound pleasant at all. Oh, my. Not at all.

She’s pale and looking somewhat pitiful when she returns. Like a good wife, she returns to what she was doing, kneading bread for supper. I pat her and smile. She smiles bravely back, and I put the problem from my mind.

She reminds me of it the next morning. Each day at sunrise, she bolts from the bed and runs for the chamber pot. Ghastly, revolting gurgles escape my sweet wife’s throat, and it makes me shrivel inside. I’m perplexed. What can be plaguing her? I feel fine. I know it’s not the chicken we ate the night before. I devoured nearly all of it myself, since she said she wasn’t particularly hungry. This continues on for another fortnight. I’m a praying man. She assures me that she’s all right, but being a cautious soul, I consult my physicking books, almanacs, and a book of granny remedies that her mother included in her wedding trunk when I made her mine. I ask her about her symptoms.

“Have you any boils, wife?”

“No, Silas. Of course not.”

“Thrush?” I approach her and encourage her to stick out her tongue, which she does after some coaxing…well, I pried her mouth open in a rather ungainly fashion. Her tongue is a healthy pink.

“It’s not thrush.” She looks put out and shoos me away. She goes back to her knitting. It looks like she’s working on a sock, I think.

“Fever?”

“No, Silas.”

“Pustules?”

“No, Silas.”

“Goiter?” I probe her throat. She swats at my hand.

“Do I look like I have a goiter?”

“Gaseous flatulence?”

“SILAS!” She’s walking away from me now, in a huff. Perhaps I’ve gone too far. But you can’t blame a man for being concerned about his wife.

Oddly, the sickness disappears as mysteriously as it struck her, and she’s soon fit as a fiddle. And her appetite has returned, needless to say, with a vengeance.

Goodness. I’ve never seen a woman eat like that.

I don’t just mean the amount of food, for it’s certainly impressive. “Silas? Are you going to finish that bit of bread?”

“Oh, this? Are you still hungry, love?”

“Famished,” she says sweetly, eyeing my roll with clear enthusiasm. I nudge my plate over, and she falls upon it, tearing into it and stuffing great wads of bread into her mouth.

“Enjoy it, love,” I encourage, but I forgot to retrieve my plate before she also relieved me of the last few bites of my stew, as well. But it’s nice to see her feeling better, and I’m a wise man. I won’t be ungrateful for a healthy… or hungry…wife. She daubs up the last of the gravy with the last crust of bread before she clears our plates. My stomach grumbles at me, briefly, but I ignore it. I can always have my evening cup of tea, I suppose…

What’s remarkable to me are her preferences. Odd things. I found her devouring an entire basket of snap peas when she was supposed to be shelling them for supper. She snuck into the pantry and ate three pickles before she served breakfast the other morning, something I mentioned might cause another bout of indigestion. She shooed me away and asked me to retrieve the syrup from the top shelf. She then drank half of it. I nearly fainted away, both from shock and nausea.

I consulted her granny book again, and I found a footnote about odd cravings. It mentioned unnatural, inedible things, like pine needles, dust, soap, wood shavings, and other things so horrible that I shuddered, thankful that Charity hadn’t resorted to such a desperate menu. I can afford to feed my wife properly, I growled to myself. But in the footnotes, it mentioned “Be sure not to confuse a woman’s pregnant, natural, yet unusual, food cravings with pica.” Unusual. Natural. PREGNANT?!?!

I drop the book and run from the bedroom. Charity is raiding the pantry again, and she turns away from the shelf, looking guilty. There are gingersnap crumbs and a trace of syrup around her lips. “Silas,” she greets me sweetly. I eye her thoughtfully and take her hands. I hold them out and smile, spreading her arms wide, ands he embraces me happily, enjoying the attention. And that’s when I feel it. A firm, round swelling in her belly, making it stick out and press into mine.

“Charity?” I murmur.

“Yes, Silas?”

“Promise me you won’t feed our child pickles for breakfast.” She looks up into my face, and her adorable little blonde brows draw together, as though she thinks I’ve gone daft.

“Why on earth would I do such a thing? Why would I feed a child pick-“

“OUR child,” I correct her. It takes a moment or two for it to dawn on her.

“I’d never be the kind of mother to feed a child such a thing for its…breakfast…?”

“Then what kind of mother will you be, wife?” Her cheeks grow pink, and her eyes shine brighter than silver coins. Suddenly she’s laughing, and we’re dancing about the kitchen, because I have the one thing that was missing before to make my happiness complete, the one thing in my life that I ever had the temerity to ask my Father in heaven at night. A child. We were going to have a child.

We were going to have a child…

We were.

*

Look at them across the way. So smug. You’re a hypocrite, Silas, and a fool.

You walk proudly in your so-called contentment, living your mediocre little life, in your mediocre little home, with your mediocre little wife. She’s no great beauty, is she? She’ll do, I suppose.

You mock me. I have sharp ears, you cursed little man. I hear you, just as I’ve listened to the loose, flapping, disrespectful lips of everyone who came before you that lived in your ramshackle, miserable little hovel. I hear you laugh at me and pity me. I’m no great beauty. I make no such claims. I’m not a gracious hostess, and I like my own company better than anyone else’s. I don’t have time for such foolishness.

I love the feel of the dirt sifting through my fingers, how cool and rich it feels. I’m a primal woman, and I crave time in the outdoors. The moon is out tonight, full and bright, perfect for casting harvest spells before the first frost. I’ll sup at midnight and light my fires and let their smoke fragrance the heavens. Let them talk about me then. Let them laugh their foolish titters. They’re doomed to misery already. I’ve read it in my cards.

Silas might not want what he doesn’t have, but that wife of his can’t help but mourn for it, even pine for it, and that’s her greatest flaw. I love flaws. Flaws in objects, like a knothole in a wooden chair, or flaws in people, weak, tender spots that I can prick with a needle to watch them bleed. I love them all.

I know an expectant mother when I see one. She’s plumping nicely now, with her rosy cheeks and that hair, so enviably thick that I wish I could yank it out by the roots. I see her watching through her window, staring out at my garden. And who wouldn’t? See those apples, also rosy-cheeked and perfect, juicy and succulent? Admire the tassels of abundant wheat or the perfect rows of golden corn. Watch my greens blossom like great flowers, unfurling thick, tender leaves, just waiting to be chopped, diced and thrown into a stew pot with onions and beef. I see that shine in her eyes. She’s fallen to my curse, like so many before her. She yearns.

I know little of yearning in myself. I’ve learned to live with disappointment. I expect nothing of other people except the worst, so I can only blame myself if I feel they’ve let me down or that I’ve suffered from their shortcomings, or their comings and goings. Ha! I’m better than all of them. I wasn’t always the miserable wretch you see before you.

I’m an educated woman, a rare thing, indeed. My mother coddled and spoiled my sister and raised her with it in mind to marry a rich, kind man. She knew I held less promise, since, and I will easily admit, I wasn’t the most picturesque child. My father was a reasonable soul. “Little Matilda has been blessed with other gifts. She has a…clever tongue. Yes. Bright as a button.” At least Father tried, bless his soul.

When a woman hasn’t a knack for feminine wiles or the prerequisite idiocy that kind of thing requires, she has to take a different tack. I was a precocious reader for my age as a young girl. It’s nothing to me to pronounce tongue-twisting words of any dialect for the purpose of reading and chanting spells. I know hundreds of recipes for potions and brews. I commune with the dead, but I don’t necromance. The results aren’t pretty.

Father tried to find me a husband, and it went badly. I turned him into a sheep, and then I released him into the forest, which was well populated by wolves. It was no less than he deserved. He was a mean drunk and he had the unfortunate tendency to fart as easily as breathe.

You might think me a lonely old woman. You think wrong. I have my lovely cat, and I can commune with any beastie that walks on four legs or that flies in the air. I can even talk to plants, and they talk back. My rampion plants have a wicked sense of humor. They agree with me that Silas’ wife’s heartsick cravings make their day, and they emit a tempting, delectable aroma that the wind then blows to her kitchen window.

How I love to see people suffer.

*

“Silas…” Charity watches me expectantly, then looks away. I know that look. This doesn’t bode well. She wants something, but she thinks I’ll say no. But I smile indulgently, like the reasonable, accommodating husband that I am.

“Yes, love? What do you need?” It’s a frequent question between us. This woman is all about need now that she carries my child. Foot rubs, neck rubs, fetching her warm milk in the middle of the night, and other such little chores I can handle.

“Rampion.” Am I hearing her correctly?

“Er…what?”

“Rampion,” she pronounces emphatically, pouncing on each syllable.

“That’s…what I thought you said.”

“Silas, I must have some.”

“Charity, my darling…rampion’s hard to come by. I’ll need to go to market, and it might not even be in season! It would cost a fortune! Wouldn’t you settle for some of those nice turnips that-“

“NO!” Did she just shriek at me? This isn’t my wife. Her eyes have a strange gleam in them and her usually fair cheeks are florid.

“Darling –“

“Don’t you ‘darling’ me,” she hisses. She’s hissed at me! “I. Need. RAMPION.”

“Dear,” I tell her gently, “that’s not reasonable.” And I’m a reasonable man.

“It would be simple enough,” she tells me, reconsidering her tone of voice and demeanor overall. “You wouldn’t even need to travel so far to the market, Silas. It wouldn’t cost you a thing to just…go across the way. Perhaps after it’s dark.”

“What are you saying, wife?” An ugly flush creeps over my skin, and her voice grows softer and more suggestive, so that I’m forced to close in on her and stare at her mouth.

“There’s rampion just across the way. It’s perfect, Silas. It’s ready to harvest, and she has plenty of it. She wouldn’t miss it.”

“Woman, have you lost your mind!” I don’t mean to bellow like that, and the force of my voice blows back those tiny tendrils of hair around Charity’s temples. She winces and rocks back on her feet, but then she’s at me again, attacking me with her feminine logic. And wiles. Let’s not forget those.

“Silas,” she muses, letting her fingertip brush over my arm in that way that gives me little shivers. “I crave it. I dream about it.”

“About greens? You dream about greens.”

“I do. I wake up, and it’s the first thing on my mind. The baby knows what it wants to eat, Silas.”

Now it was the baby’s fault. I should have known, I suppose. She bites her lip briefly, then licks the damage. Blasted woman. She’s undoing me. “Just a taste.”

“Just a leaf or two?” I want to kick myself for letting the words escape my lips, because I don’t want her to think for one minute that this is all right with me. I don’t plan on doing something so absurd. “Only once.” It wasn’t a question, but again, the words are damning, and my voice sounds unsure and weak. I hate when I sound like that, and I feel myself bending around her tiny finger. “Not that I have any intention of going over there. That fence of hers is ridiculously high.”

“Of course it is,” my wife agrees solemnly. I follow her as I speak, since she’s moving about the kitchen, setting the table for supper.

“I’d have to go out in the middle of the night!”

“It might be cold, too,” my wife says thoughtfully. She goes to the hook by the door and points to my coat. “I patched the rip, Silas. Should be cozy and warm now.”

“Charity –“

“Don’t forget your boots and gloves. I’ve a small basket that you can take with you, Silas. Or, just use your pockets.”

“Charity! I’ll do no such thing!”

“Take a lantern with you,” she reminds me sweetly.

I open my mouth to protest, and she turns those innocent, soulful blue eyes on me, and I know I’ve just sealed my fate.

Once she’s gone to bed, I put on my damned boots and patched coat, but I decide to leave the blasted basket behind. If anything happens to me on my trek, I want to have both hands free to scale the fence before that witch catches me.

It’s dark outside, and the moon above is bright, seeming to watch my every movement as I slip across the way toward Matilda’s garden. I feel as though myriad eyes are on me, as well; even the stars threaten to whisper in her ear and betray me as a thief. Chills run up and down my spine the closer I come to her home. It seems more menacing at night. I notice the ropes of dried vegetables, fruits and mottled corn she has hanging over her veranda. Unfortunately, there’s also drying meat, and it hasn’t been skinned completely from the kill…my stomach knots with revulsion and I taste bile mingled with a hint of my past supper on the back of my tongue. My heart pounds, and I feel a hint of sweat break out over my face, even though the night is cold enough for me to see my frosty breath.

The fence is sturdy, easily bearing my weight as I climb, but the wires are made of twisted metal, and the rust bites into my flesh. I fear gangrene and lost digits, or worse, but I hoist myself over the obstacle without too much difficulty, trying not to land with too loud a thud. The earth is soft beneath my boots, and I run quickly, looking about furtively, and I approach her garden on the west side of her house.

It’s magnificent. Every row is perfectly tilled, each plant evenly spaced. I smell the geraniums and chrysanthemums that she’s planted to keep the rabbits out of her cabbages and carrots. The fragrance of apples and persimmons tickle my nose, and I understand my wife’s cravings, now. I’m thankful that I have work that takes me away from my house daily, or I, too, would go mad for wanting, again, what I know I can’t have.

I spy the section of her corner of Eden that’s dedicated to greens, and the rampion is beautiful. The leaves gleam in the light of my lantern as I stoop over them. I smell the loam and the pungent fragrance of the plants themselves. The stalks are tender and crisp, yielding easily to my grip as I pluck a handful. I feel guilty, ruining the pristine arrangement of the plants by uprooting this one, but I hear Charity’s voice in my head, goading me, assuring me that it’s all right. She’ll never notice. I pluck another handful of the precious greens, deciding that it’s not worth my while to desecrate the witch’s garden with my theft unless I take as much as I can get away with. I pat the soil over the slight indentation in the ground, hoping it isn’t too noticeable in the light of day.

I hear a low hiss. It’s that cat. Her yellow eyes remind me of a snake’s, and she narrows them, as if to tell me “I see you.” That miserable beast gives me the willies. She warns me with a low, guttural growl that doesn’t belong in a feline mouth. Her ruff of fur rises on the back of her neck and her back arches intimidatingly. I don’t want to challenge her or push my luck any further.

I break into a dead run. The fence seems too far away, mocking my heavy boots that sink slightly into the soil. I trod on a dry twig, which snaps like a firecracker. Damn it! That won’t do at all…I can make it, but that splinter will be the devil to pluck out once I get back inside. My hand burns as I hoist myself over the fence again, and home has never welcomed me so fervently before.

I lock the door after myself, shuck my boots and coat by the door, and then tramp back to our humble little suite. There lays Charity, sleeping peacefully with moonlight shining over her hair and flawless skin. Her belly looms large beneath the covers, tenting them, and I lay down beside her, palming my child’s rump protectively. Your father hopes you enjoy the rampion, naughty one, and that you restore your mother’s sanity, soon.

“Did you get it, Silas?” Her voice is full of sleep, lucky minx. She wasn’t the one scared out of her wits and tramping about in the cold.

“Yes,” I yawn grouchily as I curl myself around her warmth and pull the covers up to my chin. Beside me, her eyes snap open wide, and suddenly I feel the blankets thrown back and the mattress bounce beneath me as she hurls herself out of bed. “Wife?”

“Where is it?” she cries as she putters around the room, searching for her robe. It would be a comical sight if I weren’t exhausted and craving the feel of her against me, so I can drop off to a well-deserved, if slightly guilty, sleep. But she’s out of the bedroom in a flash, and I hear her rummaging in the cupboard for a bowl. She calls out to me, “Silas! Run fetch me some water from the well!”

“Father in heaven,” I mutter. No rest for the weary. I put my boots back on and tramp back outside, cursing the cold. As I lower the bucket into the well, I feel a strange flutter of unease, but I mark it up to how chilly it is outside as the drafts of wind shiver up my spine.

I can’t help feeling that I’m being watched.

It doesn’t take Charity long to assemble a salad out of the fresh, ripe greens. She does it with great ceremony once I’ve emptied them from my pockets and helped by rinsing them off. She chops them neatly and tosses them with wafer-thin slivers of radishes, scallions, jicama and carrots, and then she drizzles them with oil and vinegar, and just a pinch of sugar. Charity waits for me to pull out her chair, smiles lovingly, then falls upon the salad like a ravenous jackal on a haunch of lamb. She rolls her eyes in ecstasy, and I don’t dare ask her for a bite. I don’t know how much of my hand I’d come back with if I snitched a leaf of those shining, succulent greens.

She blots up the last of the vinaigrette with a crust of bread, sits back and sighs, patting her belly. “Silas, that was lovely.”

“Can I go back to bed now? Can WE go back to bed?” I inquire. I take her plate and put it in the wash tub, and I usher her back to our room. This time, I snuff the candles and reclaim my place at her back, her sweet rump pressed into my belly. Finally.

Enough of this thieving business. Please, father in heaven, give me back my wife’s sanity. Please?

I drop my whittling knife, just shy of skewering my foot, when Charity sneaks up on me out in the shed. I blame myself for wanting a few spare minutes to sit idle; I haven’t many vices, but I do enjoy shaping wood with my own hands. But her light tap on my shoulder scares me out of my wits… not that I’ve been well acquainted with them, anyway. Did I mention being an expectant father is very stressful? An uncharacteristically childish little yelp escapes me, and I spin around and glare up at my wife once I retrieve my knife.

“Yes, love? What can I do for you?”

“Silas, you look put out. Poor thing. Here, refresh yourself with a nice, cool drink of water.” I soften a little, and I accept the glass eagerly, allowing myself several cool, thirsty gulps. “I was thinking some rampion would go nicely with supper.”

Shame on me for making assumptions about my wife’s intentions. I sputter and choke, spitting out the water in a most unbecoming fashion. “Goodness, Silas!” She whacks me on the back and rubs it, fussing over me. “Poor dear, you drank it too quickly.”

“Wife,” I gasp, “have you gone daft?”

“Of course, not, Silas. What a silly thing to say!” She pouts at me prettily. “Did you notice that Matilda’s wagon is gone?”

“Yessssss…” As I let the word out of my mouth, I realize I’ve landed neatly into her trap.

“It would be easy. You wouldn’t even have to wait until nightfall this time.”

“It will be even easier if I stay right here. No, Charity. No more stealing.”

“It’s hardly stealing! They’re merely greens, Silas! Plants! Why, if they were just growing wild in the woods, they wouldn’t belong to anyone!”

“We don’t live in the woods. They belong to the witch next door, and if you haven’t noticed, wife, she detests us. No. Loathes us. Yes, that’s a better way of looking at it.”

“Silas!”

“NO, wife, a thousand times, no!”

“Silas, I crave it. I can’t help it. I must have more of that rampion! Nothing else will do.”

“Have some bread and honey.”

“I had some for breakfast,” she snaps, irked. I glare.

“Some mutton, then.”

“That’s not even similar! And greens are a healthy food for a growing baby!”

“They’re not a healthy food for a loving husband who’s afraid for his life! That’s not a kind woman who lives next door, Charity. She can hurt us. I know this. You know this. She isn’t right.”

“If she’s not at home, she won’t know. Just a handful, Silas. Perhaps, two,” she reconsiders, tapping her chin. “They’d taste nice in a stew, I think, with some of the turnips I pulled up yesterd-“

“NO!” I fold my arms. “You won’t get me outside, across that field, in that woman’s backyard, and over that fence to steal more of that woman’s greens! That’s the end of it, Charity! That’s my final word!”

…suffice it to say, it isn’t. I’m certainly grumbling up a storm now, aren’t I, and looking rather foolish on my hands and knees, trying to pick a handful of rampion without depleting any single bunch too much. My stomach is twisted in a savage knot, and I’m sweating like a heretic tied to the stake. This is ridiculous. This is a fool’s errand.

I’m that fool. My errand may well get me killed. I should have heeded my sainted mother’s wishes and become a priest.

Matilda’s cat hisses at me again. I hiss back, and I run as fast as I can, completely convinced that I can hear wagon wheels coming up the lane, even though the air is still and I don’t smell horseflesh. My wife ushers me inside in a huff.

“That took an awfully long time,” she complains impatiently, looking irritated and hungry. “Come now, give them here, so I can scrub them. Clean those turnips when you have a minute, they won’t throw themselves into the pot.”

“Wife,” I pant, certain that my face is redder than an overripe tomato, “a… little gratitude… would be nice.”

“So would eating supper on time,” she sings over her shoulder, once she snatches the greens from my sweaty palms and dumps them onto her chopping board. I grumble to myself as I take the cursed, underappreciated turnips outside. “Why couldn’t YOU be what she craves?” I demand, but they seem to shrug up at me, whispering, “We’re not worthy.” Once they’re cleaned, I join my wife in the kitchen, and my mouth waters at the scent of the lamb chunks and onions sizzling in the pot, heavily seasoned with sage, pepper, marjoram and other savories. This better be a supper fit for a king. I go back to my whittling, and for some reason, the tiny figure is taking on the shape of a tiny woman with a pot belly. Odd.

Charity doesn’t actually call me to supper. I actually wander back into the kitchen when the aromas become too much for me to bear, but lo! Behold my darling wife at the table, plowing through the remainder of stew in her bowl with a hunk of bread. I wander to the stew pot, and it’s nearly empty! Just a few miserable chunks of carrot and turnip left, and the edge of lamb gristle and homely lump of fat swimming in the dark brown broth. My stomach grumbles in confusion, and I tell my patience goodbye.

“Fie on you, wife!”

“That’s a bit extreme, husband,” she murmurs as she chases the last of her broth with the spoon. “I called you in, earlier.”

“In a voice even a gnat couldn’t hear?”

“Don’t be silly, Silas. I saved a bit for you.” I kick a tiny footstool I carved across the table in a fit, and her eyes grow round and frightened.

“No more. I don’t care about dinner. Truly, I don’t.” You know good and well I’m lying. I care about it more than I care to think about right now. My stomach will never forgive me the loss of that lamb. “But no more stealing, Charity. Do you hear me? No. More. Rampion.”

“A-all right, Silas,” she stammers. Sheepishly, she ladles the last remnant of stew into my bowl, hands me a slice of bread, and I tease my poor gullet with the meager offerings.

I’m implacable until it’s time to retire for the night. I help Charity to brush her hair, and I linger at the task, soothing myself with the feel of her smooth locks slipping through my fingers. “Silas, I appreciate you,” she murmurs thoughtfully. She leans back against me and smiles, and her fingers stroke my cheek. I feel a warm, fuzzy glow slip over me, until she asks me, ever so sweetly, “Could you fetch me some milk?” I sigh, and I fume my way into the kitchen for the damned milk, but it’s a much saner errand than petty theft.

I make it back to bed without incident, and I turn to my wife once the cup is empty, but my wife’s fallen asleep, and any hopes I have of my wife showing me her gratitude in any meaningful fashion are quashed for the night. Well, then.

Well, then.

“Silas,” I hear Charity hiss. I bat away at the whispering, warm breath fanning over my nose and the hint of glare that I see from beneath my lids. I’m exhausted, and sleep keeps pulling on me, urging to ignore my wife’s needs.

But Charity’s needs are impossible to ignore. I believe we went over that before.

“Silas,” she repeats, nudging me. “Wake up. Quickly.”

“What’s the matter, Charity?” I demand groggily. She’s holding the cursed lantern up over my face, and I blink into its glare through slitted lids. “Why are you still up?”

“Silas…I’m having cravings.”

“They’ll go away. You’re just tired.” Which means, I’m just so tired. “Go back to bed, wife.”

“Not without some rampion,” she wheedles. “I need it. I must have it, else I’ll never rest.”

“Out of the question.” I roll over and tug my pillow over the side of my face to block the glow of the lantern and to return to dreamland.

“Wake up, Silas! Go! Now, quickly!”

“There’s no point in asking me again, Charity. The answer is no. I’ve been an understanding husband up til now.”

“A handsome, loving, darling, virile husband,” she agrees, “who would do anything to please and care for his loving, devoted wife.”

“Except more stealing,” I correct her, yawning. “Anything but that.”

“Silas!” she shrills, pounding her fist into her pillow. “I need it NOW! Now, now, NOW!”

“No! No, no, NO!” I parrot feebly. “My bones are weary, and I need sleep. No, wife, I actually CRAVE sleep, of the unguilty variety, and I won’t have it tonight if you make me commit the crime of pillaging Matilda’s blasted garden again for her rampion! No more midnight raids! No more snacking, cravings, yens or longings for odd vegetables! Make due with turnips. Apples. Potatoes. All perfectly nice foodstuffs, Charity.”

“They’re… not rampion,” she sniffles.

Confound it.

Sniffling. Weeping. I feel myself twisting and writhing around her little finger again, and it’s killing me. She’s destroying me. I’ve always tried to be a good husband of upstanding moral character and fortitude. Now I’m a petty thief and a scaredy cat, and I’m a slave to my wife’s strange yearnings for leafy greens. This isn’t where I saw myself in life, when I was a boy and I imagined how life would be when I eventually took a wife. I pictured smoking my pipe and bouncing a babe upon my knee, and having a rosy-cheeked, fair-haired wife feeding me supper and rubbing my feet at the end of a trying day. I’ve always only wanted what I had. I’ve never wanted complications.

I’ve never wanted desperate, gasping weeping and sobbing interspersed with words like “mean husband, Silas” and “never loved me” and “poor, unfortunate mother of a babe already deprived of the good things in life.” Really, Charity. She sniffles and dabs her eyes, now red-rimmed and puffy.

“Silas?” I sigh and shove my feet into my shoes.

“Not another word, wife. Not another word.” I tramp out of the kitchen, skipping my coat. I know the vigorous sprint home and the frantic leap over the fence, both ways, will warm me up sufficiently. I ignore her call of my name and set myself to my chore.

The wind is even more bitter tonight, and there is a crisp bite to it that stings my nostrils and makes me choke on the cold air. My feet tramp over the dead leaves and twigs, and the stars and full moon mock me for a fool. I shiver but I focus on the garden, my silent tormentor and the cause of the unrest at my house, the reason I’m constantly evicted from my marital bed in the dead of night.

“Confound it, Charity,” I mutter. “Why rampion? Why not turnips? Why not bread? Why not milk?” I consider all of the nice, easily obtainable foods she could crave instead, perfectly nice things to eat, affordable, nutritious and tasty. Perhaps not the turnips, but they fill you up, don’t they? I track my way back to the garden, and I notice that the earth is more firmly packed tonight, no doubt because of the frosts we’ve begun to have. More telling, however, are a set of footprints, large ones, that have trekked this way recently…

“Silassssssssss…” I shriek in the most unmanly fashion, surprised out of my wits, and I spin on the interloper. It’s Matilda. And her glare reminds me that I’m the intruder on her land.

Turns out the footprints were mine, left from my boots sinking into the mud the night before. Oh, my heavens, I’m as good as dead.

“You,” she hisses, stabbing her finger into my chest. I shrivel back and yelp, feeling very unmanly and very afraid. She’s grown more hideous than I remember, if that’s possible, and I want to blame the fact that it’s dark, and that the moon is throwing prominent shadows under the skull-like hollows beneath her venom green eyes, and her lantern illuminates her bony cheeks and reveals in perfect detail the webby latticework of wrinkles in her parchment yellow flesh. Her hair hangs in knotty, graying black ropes, pulled back from her face with strips of leather thong. They’re threaded through with gris-gris and talismans made of bone, and there is a silver hoop hanging through her nose, eerily resembling a bull’s.

I’ve grabbed this bull by the horns. I’m trespassing. She’s eyeing me with savage intent. My manhood shrivels into a dried-up, miserable little walnut.

“You!” she screeches this time. Her cat yowls in agreement, throwing its hackles up as it circles me. What cat does that? Somehow, I’ve landed in my own little corner of hell. What was a silent night has come alive with every sound in the wilderness; crickets and hooting owls, the biting wind, a flock of sparrows that chitter off into the night in a rush of beating wings. “What business have you in my garden, thief? You’re the one,” she nods, eyes gleaming. “You stole my rapunzel.”

“R-r-r-rah-ruh-ra-r-rampion,” I stutter.

“It’s the same thing,” she accuses me. “Dolt. You stole it.”

“Perhaps some rabbits ate it. Pesky little creatures,” I suggest, grasping at straws.

“No. You stole it. They told me so. And you’ve ridiculous big feet, Silas. You’re a Neanderthal, after all.” I’m hurt, even though I have no idea what that even means.

“Greens can’t talk!”

“AHA! You’ve as much as admitted it, you miserable man! Thief! BEGGAR! IMPUDENT!”

“I resent that!” I cry.

“I said, ‘impudent,’” she says sourly, with a roll of those sinister eyes. Impudent? I mouth to myself, before I realize that she didn’t just insult my masculinity, after all.

“My wife needed it.”

“She needed my rampion.”

“She still needs it. She’s pregnant, you see. You have to understand, she has these odd… cravings, I suppose.”

“Odd, you say? How quaint. You wish to please your wife.” The word sounds vulgar on her lips. I feel myself shrivel a bit more, wishing I could sink into the ground. “Your lovely, expectant wife, ripe with heaven’s gift.” I shiver.

“Er…yes. That’s it. I wish to please her.”

“You’ve trod the road to ruin,” she assures me cheerfully. “No one steals from me. NO ONE! Not some fleabitten, thieving farmer with a spoiled wife! I’ve heard the two of you mock me! I’ve seen your wife staring into my garden with her thieving eyes, and you come in with your thieving hands and take what doesn’t belong to you! My rapunzel cried out to me, Silas. You destroyed my plants in cold blood.”

“Plants don’t have blood,” I correct her kindly, holding up a cautious hand to get her attention. She comes after me, swinging her lantern, meaning to take my head off with it. I run, but she’s inhumanly fast. She catches the back of my nightshirt in her fist, jerking it. I stumble forward and land in the dirt face-first, and I spit out a clump of what I think is dead grass. Horrified, I realize it’s a rampion leaf.

“MURDERER! You’ve killed again!” She beats me about the head with her gnarled, twisted cane, and I cry out and hold out my arms to protect me.

“SILAS!” My blood runs cold. Charity runs from the house, wrapped up in my coat. Her feet are shod only in her thin-soled house slippers, and she looks frantic, eyes round and streaming with tears. “SILAS! LEAVE MY HUSBAND ALONE!”

“He’s a thief!” Matilda insists as I scramble back up to my feet. “You told him to steal my rapunzel!”

“He only borrowed some,” Charity sobs, dabbing her cheeks on my coat sleeve. I pull her to me, sheltering her in my arms, but Matilda’s eyes stab us both.

“You can’t give it back,” Matilda mutters, annoyed at both of us. “When you take something that you have no intention of giving back, it’s stealing.”

“We didn’t mean to steal,” Charity sniffles. It doesn’t have the same effect on Matilda that it does on me, unfortunately. Her eyes are hard and her mouth is mulish and thin. Then she speaks again, and I regret it, because her teeth are mottled, rotten snags that release tiny flecks of spit at us as she pronounces her sentence.

“I have an offer you can’t refuse.”

“Then how is it an offer?” I argue, confused. “If you make us an offer, and if you expect us to take it without our consent, doesn’t that make it a threat?”

“We don’t need any more rampion,” Charity promises. “We swear never to go into your garden and disturb you ever again!”

“You’ve disturbed me, all right. Perhaps you’re not the idiot I thought you were, Silas. You’re right. I offer nothing. But I promise you, my rapunzel’s not free. It’s precious to me.”

“We’ll give you whatever you want!” Charity cries. All around me, I feel the night’s creatures stirring, and the wind whistles through the leaves of every plant in Matilda’s cursed garden. If I listen closely, I think I can hear her rampion laughing at me… have I gone mad?

“I’ll take what’s most precious to you,” she informs us smugly. I hate her smile more than her glare, because it cuts more sharply. A witch who’s made up her mind is a dreadful, terrifying sight. “Your child.”

Charity’s fainted. Damn it.

My feet sink into the ground in my effort to carry her back to my house. Matilda doesn’t follow us. She’s too busy cackling at my retreating back, and it sounds like all of the bells in hell.

I lay her down in our bed, and the sheets are already cold from her absence. She’s chattering, and I cover her with as many blankets as I can find. “Silas, hold me! Lock the doors!”

“I have, wife. Here, now.” I climb into the bed beside her, and I hold her to me, shivering and petrified. I absorb the chill from her skin, and I can’t get warm. “What she proposes is ridiculous. She’s just a foolish, queer little old woman.”

“I heard that!” Matilda screams from outside. It’s uncanny; I barely even murmured the words. It hits me forcefully, and all at once, that she’s been able to hear us all along. Her laughter drifts to us on the wind, an ugly, hateful racket to our ears. “Your child will be mine, else I’ll curse you with blights and misery the world has never known! The worst nightmares you’ve ever dreamt will be a walk in the rain compared to the plagues I’ll lay on your heads! You owe me! You’ve stolen my precious babies! I’ll have yours, Silas! I’ll have the child of your blood!”

I’m a man. She’s a very disgusting woman. Hearing those words spring from her mouth, with that in mind, makes my manhood shrivel even more.

The days fall away too fast, until the next full moon. Charity goes into labor.

I’m a wreck. As promised, I run across the field and bang on the witch’s door. She tsks as she stares across the threshold. “You could be more respectful of an old woman’s house.”

“Hurry,” I spit. “She’s ready. You promised you’d help.”

“It matters not what I promised,” she sniffs as she hobbles back into her home. I wait outside, impatient and chilled, and I stamp my feet to warm them up. She misinterprets it as a threat. “You DARE, SILAS?”

“Hurry,” I plead helplessly. “She’s feeling badly.”

“Serves her right. Mother’s curse,” she shrugs, and I hear the witch humming to herself, sounding almost cheerful. She goes this way and that, moving about her parlor and reaching for several implements. She gathers up a small, locked box, and a large basket with a folding lid. I’m certain it’s not food. She’d never be that generous.

She marches imperiously toward the fence separating our properties, and with a wave of her hand, the posts and rails warp and bend, and a section of it dissolves into the ground. She walks through it the new gap as nicely as you please while I gape after her. “W-what was that?”

“Never you mind, Silas. Never you mind.” She’s still humming that awful melody under her breath, and her miserable, mangy cat follows her. I kick at it, but the animal hisses at me, and she leaps up, crawling up her mistress’ gnarled body until she’s perched on her shoulder. The cat gnaws on one of Matilda’s locks of hair, purring and pawing at it. I want to retch.

Inside, my wife lays there, writhing and moaning. Her skin is covered with a sheen of sweat and her hair is spread over the pillows in unruly tangles. “Get her out of that nightgown,” Matilda hisses at me, “and be quick about it. Then draw me some water from the well. Lots of it. Basins. Pots. Hurry up, you useless little man.”

“Do what she says,” Charity wails from the bed. I fumble as I help her out of the gown, but I only have time to dump it in a heap on the floor before fleeing the room. Matilda brandishes her cane at my retreating back, and that damned cat hisses at me again!

The next few hours are hell. I’ve been thrown out of my bedroom. My wife’s alone with Matilda as her midwife, and I’m sweating so badly that I’ve drenched my socks. I pace. I worry. I sit. I stand. I sit again. I feed the dwindling fire until it roars again in the grate. I boil water when I’m told to. Matilda then hands out a vicious looking pair of metal tongs that almost make me faint. “Surely you can’t mean to use those on my wife! I won’t allow it!” She hisses at me, and I cower in the corner of my sitting room. She goes back into the room after boiling the cursed instrument herself, humming that awful little tune again as she dips it into the water, turning it this way and that.

“Soon,” she mutters before closing the door behind herself.

I weep. I don’t care.

Charity’s grunts and cries graduate to curses that I didn’t realize she knew, and she moves on to outright screaming that raises the hair on my flesh. I hear Matilda chanting and grunting orders at Charity from behind the door, and the bed creaks and squeals each time my wife tosses or turns.

“PUSH!” Matilda growls. “PUSH, DAMN YOU!”

“LEAVE HER ALONE! LEAVE MY WIFE BE!” I bellow, and I bang on the door until my fists throb, but Matilda won’t let me in. My cries mingle with Charity’s, and I hear the bed creak, again and again, the high-pitched grinding of the joints and nails scratching along my nerves.

There is a sickening, wet, ripping sound, and Charity’s screams crescendo, ululating and quaking until… they stop. She’s silent. I hear a light slap against damp, plump flesh, and the air is split by a shrill, squalling cry.

I’m a father!

I jiggle the doorknob, shaking it. “Let me in,” I croak desperately. “What is it? I need to see.”

“It’s a girl,” Matilda informs me cheerfully. “She’s lovely.”

“Let me see her.” I hear Matilda moving about the room, and Charity’s sobbing with relief that her ordeal is over. “Let me see my daughter. Open the door, now.”

“Momentarily,” Matilda promises smoothly. Why is she so calm? I don’t understand? Why does she sound so placid and cavalier about this? Why is Charity still weeping, and sounding more upset than before? I’m perplexed, and I’m impatient. I need to see my child.

Mere minutes later, Matilda jerks the door open. “Step aside, Silas,” she huffs. Her arms are laden with a soft, small bundle that whimpers. She bounces it gently and patiently, staring down into the small flap of fabric that I realize is a baby blanket.

“Let me see her.”

“You needn’t bother yourself with such things, Silas. It’s not wise to want what you know you can’t have. You said so yourself. You’re a simple man.”

“She’s mine!”

“She’s mine,” Matilda counters swiftly. She looks up at me and gives me an odd little smile, cocking her head. Her venomous eyes look satisfied, and I feel myself trembling. The floor seems to have dropped out from beneath my feet.

“Silas,” Charity rasps from the bed. I want to go to her, but Matilda is sweeping past me, gathering up her odd basket. Her rotten cat follows closely upon her heels. “Don’t leave me, Silas.” I can’t breathe. The room feels like it’s spinning, and my stomach drops into my boots.

“This was our bargain. I will raise her. You will know nothing of her. And you will envy me, as I know you think I’ve envied you. You will crave, and need, and yearn, but she will be mine.” She pronounces our fate calmly, drawing out each word with malice. They seem to hang in mid-air between us, dripping in blood.

“Please,” I whisper, reaching instinctively for the baby. I see her tiny fingers flailing in the air, but Matilda wraps her tiny hand up into the swaddling blanket.

“She’s dead to you,” Matilda decrees, and she sweeps out my door, skirts billowing behind her. The wind stirs those hideous locks of hair, and her cat trips out after her.

I fall to the floor, broken. I sob until my heart shatters.

Hours later, I bury my wife, beneath my apple tree. She would have wanted it that way.

The rampion is laughing at me.

*

It’s been quiet next door, except for that foolish man’s sobbing every night. Luckily, I barely notice. My daughter keeps me occupied. Ah, a mother’s burdens…

I won’t boast at my newborn’s virtues like some mothers I hear in the street. This child is as much of a night owl as I am, and she’s a demanding little mite, too. On that first night, I no sooner laid her down in my bed beside me than she began to wail. When I let my eyes rove over her, she looks like a little turnip, all red and wrinkly, and I wonder, briefly, if I’ve gotten myself in over my head.

“There, there.” I concentrate on those cries and reach within myself, focusing my energies, chanting a spell under my breath, and I feel my breasts tingle and stiffen. They swell until they are sore, and I grunt at the faint dampness I feel on my old housedress. The girl is already rooting, jerking her face toward my touch when I stroke her tiny, plump cheek. “Hungry little thing, aren’t you?” I unbutton my shift, and my breasts are old, pendulous, fleshy things, but now they are bountiful with fresh milk. The first drops slide from the stiff nipple, right into the child’s mouth, and she latches on with a savage little chomp that makes me wince. “Oooo!” I hear loud, grunting little sucks, and she holds onto my breast with her little fists. I remind myself that I need to trim her tiny little nails, they’re rather sharp.

I have a better chance to admire and inspect her now that she’s eating so diligently. She’s lovely, but you knew that. This is Charity’s child, and her eyes, when she cracks them open briefly to peer up at me, are the same robin’s egg blue as her departed mother’s. She barely has any hair yet, but what downy fuzz that covers her scalp is a dark, honey blonde. I already know that I plan to keep it long. A woman’s hair is her pride.

“You’re mine, little one,” I whisper to her as she lets my nipple pop loose from her rosebud mouth. She fidgets and yawns before cuddling against me for her nap, and I find a strange, dangerous emotion filling my chest.

I think I love the little dickens.

Call me eccentric. If you dare, that is. But I named her Rapunzel. If not for those very plants, I wouldn’t have a lovely daughter to brighten my days.

She’s a feisty little thing, but that’s hardly surprising, is it? She’s quick as a rat scuttling off with a scrap of bread back to its hole, and I constantly have to rescue my precious possessions from her chubby, naughty little fingers.

She’s lovely. Truly. She has her birth mother’s eyes, the clearest, purest blue, and her hair is the same golden blonde, like new wheat. Her cheeks are plump and rosy, her skin is flawless, and she is tall for her age. She has a fondness for animals, a trait I feel she gained from me, but call it motherly ego. She mauls my cat daily, but the wretch tolerates it, even leans into her touch when she curls her fists into her fur.

I realize what a special child I have one day when I go outside and watch her play in the clearing. She’s seated herself in the field near my garden, and she’s toying with some wildflowers. She tugs the petals off of a gerber daisy, but then I notice her tense up. A pout twists her tiny features, and she starts to cry. Alarmed, I hurry over and squat down to inspect her. She didn’t get a splinter or cut; she seems unharmed. “What’s the matter, little Rapunzel? Did you get a boo-boo?”

“I hurt the flowers,” she wails as she buries her little face in my breast. She’s only five, still young enough to appreciate a mother’s comfort.

“You did?”

“They said ‘Ouch,’” she explained, sniffling.

“Er…they talked to you?”

“Uh-huh.”

Goodness. I’ll have to look into this. Very soon, indeed.

“Mummy? Who is that funny man over in that house? The one who always looks sad?”

“He’s just a funny man, darling. Never mind him. He’s not someone you need to concern yourself with. Here, come help Mummy make apple dumplings.” She doesn’t need to be told twice. I put aside harvesting from my garden with it in mind to get my daughter inside. MY daughter.

She’s right. He’s lurking at his window, looking wistful and heartbroken. Good. He presumed too much and took something valuable to me, so it was only fair that I returned the favor. His blue eyes are bleak and tired, filled with longing. For Rapunzel. Ironic, isn’t it?

*

When Rapunzel turned twelve, I found myself wondering when and how this mothering thing grew so complex. I’d forgotten that girls have mood swings when they hit the change. She’s a nosy little thing, or rather, a willowy thing, now, since I’m looking up at her now. She’s taken to going through my clothing and brushing her hair in my mirror, endless strokes while she contemplates her features and sighs dreamily. It annoys me, both for her idleness and for this newly inflated ego.

She’s begun her menses and grown breasts. She’s eating me out of house and home. She questions my demands, always asking why she should have to listen to me when I tell her to help with the washing up or churn the cream or knead the bread. The nerve of the little minx! I made her pick her own switch from my elm tree for her insolence, and she’s glared sullenly at me for it since, but she’s learned not to hesitate when I enforce my parental rights.

I found that a line had been crossed the day she came home and told me that a woodsman accosted her in the forest. My fury rivaled Hephaestus with his hammer when I dragged her inside and slammed the cottage door after us. I shoved her into a kitchen chair and tucked a cup of tea into her hands. She trembled and she looked up at me through hooded eyes. I wasn’t sure what she feared more, her near-ruin at the hands of that brute or my wrath.

“How did you get away?” I demanded.

“I r-ran. He c-caught me, Mother.”

“What did he do to you?” I hissed, impatient. She squirmed and looked uncomfortable, and for some reason, guilty. My cheeks felt unbearably hot and my heartbeat sped up. I feared what she could tell me at that point. I truly did. Not for her safety.

For what I might do.

“He touched me. Here.” She covered one small breast with her palm, then wiped away his phantom touch instinctively. “I stomped his foot. I threw a rock at him, and it hit him in the eye.”

“Then what?” I asked breathlessly. I sat across from her at my breakfast table, expectant.

“I climbed up a tree.”

“Foolish girl! He’s a WOODSMAN! He could have cut it down, with you in it! You could have been dashed to the ground and killed!”

“The tree spoke to me.”

“What?!?”

“The oak. It called out to me.”

“And you climbed it. The oak tree.” My mouth dropped open. I closed it, but it dropped open again. I felt the sting of the pine beneath my palm as I slapped the table.

“It was the right thing to do,” she hiccupped. Tears filled those blue eyes and I felt like a monster. “There was a bear. A huge, black bear, mother. And…and…he attacked him. The awful man ran for his ax, but the bear knocked it from his hands, Mother! And he-he stood up, he was so big, and he fell upon him…” She shook her head in denial of what she saw, and I could tell it changed her. She saw the worst thing that could happen to someone far from home, unsheltered and unprotected.

I’ll have to thank that bear. He saved me the trouble of turning that woodsman inside out and scattering his entrails. Rapunzel’s voice calls out to me, stirring me from my reverie.

“Mother?” she pleads. She still looks afraid, and I realize it’s me she fears, now. I relent, feeling my legs turn to jelly as I stand and reach for her. Her hair smells like my lavender soap, and I crave her, the feel of her pressed against my heart.

She’s so precious to me. No one else can have her.

No one.


End file.
